United States

Dhaka has decided to take the help of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the murder of blogger Avijit Roy. The development follows an offer by the United States in this regard. Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali conveyed the government decision to a group of top diplomats including the USA during a meeting at the State Guesthouse Padma this afternoon. According to a highly-placed source at the foreign ministry, Mahmood Ali shared “the government’s decision to positively respond to the US’ offer to engage the FBI in unearthing...

The United States (US) hopes due process will be followed after an anti-corruption court in Bangladesh issued arrest warrants for former prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia, the top US diplomat for South Asia said on Thursday. The warrants for BNP chief Khaleda Zia were issued on Wednesday, an action likely to increase tension fuelling anti-government protests in which more than 100 people have been killed in the past month. Nisha Biswal, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, told a news briefing the political tension needed to be addressed internally, but the United States stood ready to help. "We do hope and expect there will be due process...

US President Barack Obama says the US is "not at war with Islam - we are at war with the people who have perverted Islam". He was speaking to representatives from 60 nations attending a three-day event on extremism that follows attacks in Denmark and France.

RECENTLY, the Office of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) called on the government of Bangladesh to improve on its labour rights, and in particular to allow for increased unionisation before it would consider restoring trade benefits. In Bangladesh, it now seems to be increasingly accepted that unionisation or some worker constituted collective...

Without an immediate genuine dialogue between Awami League and BNP, the prevailing violence in Bangladesh may “spin out of control,” US-based daily The New York Times says. In an editorial published in its print edition yesterday, the daily blamed both opposition BNP and ruling Awami League for the prevailing political violence in the country. “Unless...

The United States today condemned the prevailing unrest and political violence in Bangladesh saying that such actions are “unjustified in a democratic country”. “The United States is gravely concerned by the ongoing unrest and violence in Bangladesh,” read the statement press statement issued from the office of Marie Harf, a spokesperson of the US...

In a major shakeup in the India's foreign ministry last night, Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh was removed from her post six months ahead of her term’s end. An official statement said the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved the "curtailment" Sujatha Singh’s term as foreign secretary with "immediate effect". India’s ambassador to the United States...

Internet sites including Facebook, the world's largest social network, Instagram and other popular sites suffered temporary outages on Tuesday and a hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks claimed it caused the outages. A Twitter account that purports to speak for hacker group "Lizard Squad" posted messages suggesting that it was behind an...

India is set to strike a bilateral tax agreement with the United States as early as this weekend, hoping to boost foreign investment and ease concerns raised by bruising disputes including cases against Vodafone and Shell. The pact, which industry executives say would specifically target the prickly issue of transfer pricing, is part of...

An indignant letter from a British aristocrat who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is coming up for auction in the United States next week. Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon, a target of public outrage after she fled the doomed ocean liner on a nearly-empty lifeboat, penned the two-page letter in London a month after the disaster. "How kind of you to send me a cable of sympathy from New York on our safety," the fashion designer wrote to a stateside friend. "According to the way we've been treated by England on our return we didn't seem to have done the right thing in being saved at all!!!! Isn't it disgraceful." New England...